Returning to 1995
Nine years ago today Yitzhak Rabin was murdered. I was having dinner with my wife and two friends at the time when I should have been at the pro-peace demonstration taking place in what was then called Kikar Malchei Yisrael and is now called Kikar Rabin. At the time I wrote a piece that I hope to find soon so that I can put it here. What I can be sure of is that I failed to keep the promises I made to myself in that terrible period.
Looking back 11 years after the Oslo accords I still believe that it was a great step in the right direction. The accords failed, in my opinion, not because Israel and the US did not hold the Palestinians to their end of the bargain each step of the way. Our desire for peace was so great that we were willing to cut the Palestinians slack for not holding up their end and moved forward before their commitments were met.
Back to the Blog
Every now and then I remember that I have something to say about life and the world. I get so wrapped up in getting through each day that I often find myself losing the big picture and forgetting that there is more to life than the issues that will make or break the day. On these days I feel compelled to sit and write and share my thoughts with the world.
Every now and then I remember that I have something to say about life and the world. I get so wrapped up in getting through each day that I often find myself losing the big picture and forgetting that there is more to life than the issues that will make or break the day. On these days I feel compelled to sit and write and share my thoughts with the world. There will be those that care, those that don't, those that find what I have to say interesting and with any luck those that find what I have to say unnerving and feel compelled to respond in some way themselves. That unnerving feeling doesn't necessarily mean that they disagree with what I have to say but that it strikes some chord that spurs them into thought and ideally drives them to respond with their own feelings.
I started this blog in March of 2003 as the US invasion of Iraq was about to begin. The idea was to create a place to record the experiences that my family and I would have in Israel under the threat of being attacked by Iraq as retaliation for the invasion. To our relief this attack never came to fruition. To my dismay, late in October of 2004 the US troops are still in Iraq and there is no end to their stay in sight. While I find the thought that the US troops are there attempting to control the situation comforting I also find the fact that we can have no idea what type of country they will leave behind worrying. When US troops leave Iraq we could be left with an Arab secular country with good relations with the world or we could end up with a fanatic Islamic state similar to the Iran of the Ayatollah Khomeni. My bet is on the US leaving behind a state more similar to Iran than Jordan. The only test of the worth of the invasion of Iraq will be whether the post US-occupation Iraq is more stable than the pariah state that was headed by Saddam Hussein. Time will tell.